Two Saudi women allegedly stabbed by their African housemaid are recovering at a hospital in Yanbu.
The maid was working in her victims’ house after her recruitment nine months ago, Al-Madinah daily reported yesterday.
“The woman employer and her daughter, who were admitted to the hospital with stab wounds on Wednesday, have improved remarkably. They could be discharged after two days even though the younger woman needs further check-up as she has some blood sugar problem,” said Director of Public Relations at the Yanbu General Hospital Abdul Aziz Hadi.
The elderly woman was injured while defending her daughter from the angry maid, Madinah police spokesman Col. Fahd Al-Ghannam said in a statement shortly after the incident on Wednesday.
“The mother saw the domestic help stabbing her 17-year-old daughter who was asleep. When the mother confronted the knife-wielding maid, her fingers were cut. The daughter was injured on her face and the chest,” Al-Ghannam said.
The maid, 30, was arrested and an investigation is under way.
The incident follows another alleged crime committed by an Asian housemaid in the city about two months ago when she reportedly slit the throat of a 4-year old child of a school teacher with a cleaver.
Police found the decapitated body of the girl in a pool of blood.
Police said the housemaid took the girl into a room and committed the crime. Then she locked the apartment and sat in a corner of the room motionless.
The maid, who attempted to commit suicide by drinking quantities of detergent, was referred to the Madinah Mental Health Hospital for psychological evaluation.
Many women teachers hire housemaids to look after their children while they go to work.
According to another report, a Saudi man suspecting the behavior of his African housemaid decided to install secret cameras in the kitchen.
When he later checked the video, he saw the maid urinating in the cooking dish.
The Kingdom started recruiting a large number of African domestic helpers after Indonesia banned the the fresh recruitment of housemaids last August. Most housemaids working in the Kingdom are from Indonesia and the Philippines. The majority of the 1.5 million Indonesian workers in Saudi Arabia are housemaids.